


Entropy Dance

by esteefee



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-07
Updated: 2009-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteefee/pseuds/esteefee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>...and posted with her permission, a bashfully-written birthday snippet set in her <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/4775">Farm in Iowa</a> 'verse.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Entropy Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/gifts).



> ...and posted with her permission, a bashfully-written birthday snippet set in her [Farm in Iowa](http://archiveofourown.org/series/4775) 'verse.

Every year around his birthday, John does what Rodney too knowingly terms his "entropy keep-away dance," but what John thinks of as his usual yearly cleaning binge. While mucking out the barn, hidden behind a pile of rusted out chains, he finds a wooden toy boat, sky blue paint chipped in a familiar pattern that brings back a sense memory so vivid he has to kneel for a second and finger the rough and the smooth and breathe in the hay-scented air, hearing echoes of his grandfather's deep chuckle. When he's ready he puts it aside to give to Finn, a faint smile on his face, knowing it won't hold a candle to the Hot Wheels or the K'NEX, but hoping just the same his own son will play with it for a day or so, dreaming of ships that never sailed on endless green fields.

In the living room, when John is tacking down a strip of molding in the corner by the stairs, he finds a single earring that surely belonged to his grandmother. It's a single, small pearl, with the tiniest diamond chip possible set below—it must've cost his grandfather dear, and even then it wouldn't have been worth much, comparatively-speaking, but how his grandmother must've mourned its loss. And here it was the whole time, maybe kicked into the corner in a hasty run down the stairs and then trapped by the shadows, held safe over the years from brooms and vacuum cleaners by the fragile defense of a broken piece of molding.

John places the earring in the shallow bowl on the shelf where they keep odd and precious things—a tiny, round token from San Francisco's metro system, the first Sacajawea golden dollar Rodney ever got in change, a small, silver Irish cross, the origins of which are a complete mystery, a steel penny John found and kept for good luck when he was in the service, and a jade ring one of Finn's little daycare girlfriends had given him, much to his puzzlement.

Reminding himself to show Rodney the earring later, John continues with his cleaning. After dusting, he softly rubs wood oil of the non-lemon variety over all the ancient wood, bringing up the old shine hiding within. Wedged in a crack in the floor in the gap between Rodney's desk and the bookshelf in his office, John finds a wadded up, discarded sheet of paper covered end to end with equations—like a secret blueprint, bursting to the edges with elegant, forceful thoughts, Rodney's wild mental flights mapped on paper.

John traces them with a finger, awed at once and all over again by the complexity of his boyfriend's mind.

Carefully, he refolds the paper along the original creases and pushes it back into its secret space for someone else to find, someday.

Then John gathers up his cleaning supplies and goes to the kitchen to make lunch, entropy pushed back just a little for another year.

  


:::

Happy Birthday, sweet girl!  



End file.
